


kiss me (mistletoe)

by carissima



Series: santa baby [6]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Christmas, Curses, M/M, Magical Realism, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 22:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carissima/pseuds/carissima
Summary: “Connor wants everyone to pretend that there’s not a sprig of mistletoe floating above his head."





	kiss me (mistletoe)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eberbae (dustyjournal)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyjournal/gifts).



> this fills the mistletoe square on my christmas bingo. thanks bee for the quick beta!

Connor steadfastly ignores his teammates curious looks and carries on eating his lunch - chicken, veg, rice - keeping his eyes down on his plate. He can hear their whispers and see their pointed fingers but he keeps eating, one forkful after another.

“Hey, Davo?” Nursey says, dropping his plate on the table next to him and sliding into the empty seat.

“Don’t,” Connor warns and takes a sip of his gatorade.

“Alright.” Darnell holds his hands up briefly in surrender and digs into his own meal - pasta with chicken - but he keeps glancing at Connor.

After a few minutes, Connor throws his fork down and feels his mouth tighten. “Stop looking at it.”

“I’m not,” Darnell says automatically. As he fucking stares right at it, the filthy liar.

Leon drops into the last seat and flicks his gaze between the two of them. “What’s up?”

“Connor wants everyone to pretend that there’s not a sprig of mistletoe floating above his head,” Darnell says, raising his eyebrows at Connor and all but goading him into a response.

Leon glances above Connor’s head and his mouth twitches.

Connor hates everyone. He’s putting in a request for transfer. Somewhere warm, like Vegas maybe.

“Festive,” is all Leon says.

“So what is it, a curse?” Darnell asks. He gestures at the mistletoe with his fork thoughtfully. “Something like this happened to a guy in juniors. He used to play with your buddy Strome in Arizona. He spent an entire month being followed by a raincloud. Fucking hilarious.”

Connor doesn’t think that sounds hilarious. “How did he play?”

“Didn’t,” Darnell says with a shrug. “Sat out for the entire month.”

Connor stares at him. “Great,” he says flatly. “Thanks.”

Leon drops his fork down onto his plate and leans back in his chair, stretching his long legs under the table and somehow managing to kick both of them at the same time. He smiles innocently at them. “So what was it? A curse?”

“Yeah, turns out an ex-girlfriend was really pissed about something.” Nursey says. “Have you upset anyone recently, Davo?”

“No,” Connor says defensively.

“I can think of about 30 goalies and probably, what, around 90 defensemen who won’t be sending you a Christmas card this year,” Leon says helpfully.

“A few thousand fans,” Darnell adds, with a sly grin.

“Fuck you both,” Connor mutters. “Sid hasn’t had a curse in years. It’s not hockey-related.”

A white berry falls onto Connor’s plate and he stares at it in bemusement.

“It’s a weird choice of curse,” Leon says. When Connor looks up at him, Leon shrugs. “You’re meant to kiss under the mistletoe, right? Looks like someone thinks you need to get laid.”

“He definitely needs to get laid,” Darnell says, scrolling through something on his phone. “Wikipedia says mistletoe is a symbol of fertility and vitality.”

Leon raises his eyebrows at that little nugget of information while Connor thinks about just going home, feigning an illness and blowing off the game.

It’s not like he can play with mistletoe floating around his head, anyway.

“So what, I have sex and the mistletoe goes away?”

“Maybe,” Darnell says, sounding unsure.

“Probably,” Leon says more firmly, and judging by the sudden jerk Darnell makes next to him, there was some kind of kicking action going on under the table between them. “Sorry.”

“What’s to be sorry about?” Darnell asks, looking genuinely confused as he glances between them. “Connor gets laid? Good. Mistletoe goes? Good. It’s your classic win-win situation.”

Connor doesn’t miss the annoyed look Leon shoots Darnell on his behalf. “Sounds great,” Connor says quietly and stabs his fork forcefully into a chicken strip. His stomach is churning but he forces the chicken down his throat anyway. Whether he plays tonight or not, he’s got to keep his energy levels up.

“Maybe it’ll just disappear,” Darnell says a few minutes later, more apologetic now. Connor wonders what silent conversation he’s missed between the two of them, but whatever.

“Curses don’t just disappear,” Connor says wistfully. This is his first actual experience of a curse - they’re less common than they were ten years ago, but a few slip through the NHL-sanctioned wards. Usually it’s because the caster has a particularly strong affinity for magic, or sometimes it’s due to the strength of the emotion put into the curse. Either way, their numbers have diminished across professional sports as a whole, but the occasional curse slips through.

“How long ago did it appear?” Leon asks. “Maybe it’s a 24 hour thing.”

“About an hour ago, maybe a bit longer?” Connor says miserably. He’d been getting out of his car when he’d first noticed the plant floating above his head. He’d tried moving out of its way, but the mistletoe had just followed him and he soon gave up, wary of being caught looking like an idiot.

“Oh,” Leon winces. He reaches out to pat Connor on the shoulder in commiseration and another berry falls, hitting him square in the middle of his head and resting in his hair.

Leon fishes it out for him and drops the berry on Connor’s now-empty plate.

“Thanks,” Connor mumbles and drops his head onto the table.

*

He chooses not to watch the game from the press box, since that would draw more attention than whatever happened on the ice. He’s halfway home when the mistletoe just disappears. It just goes, leaving Connor staring at his car roof like a dumbass until the loud beeping of horns shakes him out of it. He’s already been officially scratched from the game with an upper body injury, so there’s no point in him going back to the arena to try to play but he wants to.

He smacks the steering wheel once, feels marginally better, and heads home to watch the game with a beer and chips.

They lose 5-2 to the Flames and Connor lets out a string of curses. Leon takes too many penalties, Darnell almost ends up in two fights and might as well have done for all the PIMs he racks up. Looch actually does fight and misses most of the third period and Larss looks like he might have picked up a knock, based on the poor way he’s skating towards the end of the game.

Connor helps himself to another beer.

*

He wakes up early, still mistletoe-free, and heads to the practice rink to put in a bit of cardio to make up for missing the game. Running is the worst but he keeps his mind blank and his rhythm steady, putting in a full hour on the treadmill. He’s just about to lift some weights when he hears an odd noise and he knows, he fucking knows before he even looks up that the mistletoe is back.

Some of the guys have started to filter in already, greeting him with nods and varying degrees of frustrated looks when they see the mistletoe is still hanging around.

“Just get laid already,” Darnell tells him when he passes by on the way to the trainers.

Connor wants to stick his tongue out at him but he just about manages to refrain. It’s a close call though, and probably helped by Leon joining him by the free weights. Everyone else seems to be giving him a fairly wide berth and he’s okay with that today.

“So probably not a 24 hour thing,” Connor tells him. The words feel heavy on his tongue. When the mistletoe had disappeared last night, he’d hoped that - well. He was wrong. “Looch kind of warned me about this in my rookie year, you know. I thought that maybe my collarbone had been the curse, you know?”

Leon’s watching him with sleepy-looking eyes. Connor doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that Leon’s not listening, he’s known him too long at this point and he knows Leon’s a terrible morning person. He also knows that Leon sees more than he lets on. Connor likes that a lot.

“Manning is a loser,” is what Leon says. “He didn’t curse you. He’s just a bad player.”

Connor fights a grin. Those months had been hellish and cost him the Calder. He’s probably more bitter about that than he should be after two consecutive Art Ross trophies but whatever. He’s competitive. He wanted that trophy.

He glances around to check that no one else is near or heading towards them, but it’s a waste of time because only Klef and Benning are in the room with them and they’re on the other side, apparently competing on the treadmill for something. Connor feels something in his chest ease a little because he likes when the team shows him that they still care about winning. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember when they’ve been racking up loses over the last two years.

“Last night, it went away,” he tells Leon, keeping his voice low just in case.

Leon’s eyebrows rise in surprise. “It went?” he asks carefully.

“I got halfway home and it just disappeared,” Connor says.

“Huh,” Leon says after a beat. “That’s odd?”

Connor exhales loudly. “Frustrating,” he amends. It’s a familiar feeling, playing on this team, but last night he’d been practically swimming in it. “And now it’s back.”

Leon frowns and Connor leaves him to his thoughts for a few minutes as he goes back to lifting his weights.

“Maybe it’s hockey related,” Leon says finally. He looks frustrated now too. “Maybe the mistletoe appears to stop you playing.”

“Like you said yesterday, it’s a pretty strange choice of curse,” Connor huffs out, his biceps burning as he lifts. “Why mistletoe?”

“To fuck with you?” Leon offers. “Because it’s Christmas and someone has a warped sense of humor?”

Something about the curse revolving around mistletoe doesn’t sit right with Connor, but he can’t figure out why. They’ve got two days off before their next home game and then they break for Christmas, so he’s got two days to figure this shit out, and hopefully Darnell’s wrong about how to break it because he doesn’t want to pick someone up and sleep with them simply to break a dumb curse. He tries to be a better person than that. He hopes he is, most of the time.

They go out for a team lunch with most of the guys and Connor half-hopes that the mistletoe fades away again when he’s away from the rink, but it hangs around during the whole meal. The mood around him isn’t as relaxed as it usually is during team get-togethers and Connor feels the weight of everyone’s frustration around him.

“Not a hockey thing then?” Leon murmurs, halfway through the meal. Connor usually likes to switch things up at team bonding events, sitting with teammates he might not speak to as much, but today he’s sitting between Darnell and Leon, with Larss and Klef opposite.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Connor says.

“It’s a sex thing,” Darnell says, not for the first time. “It’s mistletoe, Davo. It’s a sign. Go have some good, fun sex and get back out on the ice and kick some butt.”

Klef throws the remains of his bread roll at him and catches him square in the face. “You’re obsessed with Davo’s sex life. It’s creepy, bro.”

“I’m being a good teammate,” Darnell insists. “It’s not creepy, is it Connor?”

“It’s totally creepy,” Connor tells him with a half-shrug. It doesn’t really bother him, not nearly as much as the mistletoe itself. He’s got a thick skin for most things, he’d make a terrible hockey player if he got upset at every dig or chirp or criticism levelled at him.

Larss crosses his arms and leans forward, resting them on the table. “How strong are your residential wards?”

“Uh, pretty strong,” Connor says. He’s not sure but he thinks his realtor put the highest level barriers on the house when he bought it. He should probably check.

“Maybe that’s why the mistletoe disappears when you get closer to home,” Adam says, keeping his voice low. Connor hasn’t shared the details of his dumb mistletoe antics with the majority of the team, partly not to worry any of them and partly because sometimes, he doesn’t feel like sharing the really weird shit that happens to him.

Connor’s not sure how that helps him get back to playing in games, but it might be a start. “How do I test it?” he asks. He’s good at hockey, not so much with logic and reasoning.

“See if it disappears when you next go home,” Klef says. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense.

“Alright,” Connor nods.

“And if it works, maybe they’ll finally update the wards at the rinks,” Klef adds. “Gotta protect the savior of hockey.”

Connor shoots him a betrayed look but Klef looks unapologetic as he shoves a forkful of chocolate brownie into his mouth and somehow still manages to look as hot as a male model the entire time.

“Well, hopefully it works and we can get you back out there as soon as possible because we need some wins,” Leon says. He’s prodding at his own dessert but he doesn’t seem all that interested. Connor must look really pathetic because Leon takes one look at him, sighs and passes his bowl over.

It helps. A little.

*

The mistletoe fades when he’s five minutes from home and Connor feels like maybe Larss was onto something. He puts in a call to his agent right away, requesting higher level magical wards to be put in place at both their practice rink and Rogers Place, and figures he’ll worry about away games after Christmas if the mistletoe persists that long.

He hums something Christmassy under his breath and spends the rest of the afternoon ordering Christmas gifts for his family, paying a ridiculous surcharge to get everything delivered in time to his parents’ house. Usually they’d be flying in to spend Christmas with him but this year, Connor’s grandparents are visiting and his mom asked if he’d mind if they skipped the visit this year. She’d asked him back in September and he’d been too full of hockey and the new season to care all that much so he’d told her it was fine. She’d freak out if she saw mistletoe flying over her son’s head so it’s probably for the best, all things considered.

He gets a message from his agent while he’s having dinner in front of his television, watching the Pens lose embarrassingly to the Habs, informing him that all wards will be updated and strengthened within 24 hours, followed by a curt reminder to stay the hell out of the public eye in the meantime.

Connor rolls his eyes - like he’s desperate for the world to know that someone cursed him with freaking mistletoe, of all things - and tunes back in to see Malkin get stonewalled by Price on a breakaway.

Connor sighs and rewinds, concentrating on how quickly Price decides to make his move because they’re playing the Habs in January and with the way Price is playing this year, he needs all the help he can get if he’s going to score on him.

*

The team hold an unscheduled closed practice in the morning; just the coaches, the players and the training team are present. For the first few minutes, most of the players and at least two coaching staff are too distracted watching the mistletoe zoom around the ice, keeping up with Connor as he warms up. No matter how fast he skates, the mistletoe stays stubbornly above his head, shedding berries and a few leaves every now and again. He apologizes the first few times when skates slice through the berries on the ice but he gives up once it starts happening on every drill.

“It’s like a skills session,” JJ laughs as he skates quickly around a fallen leaf. “Fines for everyone who skates through Connor’s mistletoe.”

“It’s probably bad luck or something,” Klef muses, staring at the mess left behind from a mushy berry. “Like a broken mirror. No good sex for seven years if you skate over the mistletoe.”

Darnell makes a wounded noise from behind Connor and he turns to see him frantically trying to brush mistletoe from his left skate. “Don’t say that,” he hisses at Oscar. “Why would you say that, man?”

Klef just laughs and skates away, easily dodging all extraneous plant material strewn across the ice.

“Idiots,” Leon says mildly. He’s leaning against the boards with his usual bored expression, but Connor can see the humor hiding in his eyes. He also, Connor notes, has completely clean blades.

“Don’t want to risk the bad luck, eh?” Connor says, nodding towards Leon’s skates.

“No such thing,” Leon says easily. “Just poor skaters.”

“Right,” Connor says and they both watch Looch skate clumsily over two berries, their juice squelching across the ice. Connor wrinkles his nose and Leon tries to cover his laugh with a loud cough. “Hey, you wanna hang out after this?”

Leon shrugs. “Sure. Want me to pick up food and meet you at yours?”

“Yeah,” Connor says. He shoots Leon a grin. “Sushi?”

Leon groans. “Really?”

“Please?” Connor wheedles. He very deliberately looks upwards at the mistletoe, currently raining berries down onto Connor’s shoulders.

“Oh, fine,” Leon says and pushes away from the boards, skating away from Connor and dancing around all the fallen berries. “You owe me though.”

“Sure, sure,” Connor waves him away. The last few days have been pretty fucking terrible, what with the curse and not being able to play and watching the team lose without him. It’s just lunch at his with Leon, but Connor’s weirdly excited about it. Leon won’t tease him about the stupid curse or make him feel worse about not playing. He’ll bring sushi - probably all of Connor’s favorites too because Leon knows his order by heart - and they’ll either play a few games of ‘chel or watch something dumb on Netflix and Connor can just relax for a few hours.

He’s mistletoe-free when he pulls up into his drive and there’s perhaps a little extra Christmas spirit in his step when he walks into his kitchen and grabs a gatorade from the refrigerator. He wanders into the living room and turns on the television, flicking over to Sportsnet out of habit.

A leaf falls out of his hair and he brushes it away idly, typing a text to his mom to let her know that he’s still alive and fine, because she likes to know that kind of stuff. He gets into a bit of a back and forth with her about what they’re doing for Christmas and his dad’s insistence that he’s going to barbeque the turkey and how much his mom disapproves of that idea, idly flicking at a berry that falls into his lap.

It takes him longer than it should to notice that his mistletoe is back, floating around his head. Mocking him.

“What the hell,” Connor mutters.

He’s distracted by his doorbell ringing and when he opens the door, Leon blinks up at the plant.

“Huh,” Leon says and passes the food he’s carrying into Connor’s arms. “That isn’t good.”

“No,” Connor says dryly and walks into the kitchen, Leon following behind him. He concentrates on sharing out the food and they sit at the table together to eat.

“So not the wards then,” Leon says eventually.

Connor pushes his plate away and sighs. “Doesn’t look like it. None of this makes any fucking sense.”

Leon stands up and takes their plates over to the sink, leaving them there for later as they move into the living room together. Leon takes one of the chairs while Connor sprawls out on the sofa. Sportsnet is still playing in the background.

“So it’s not hockey, and it’s not wards,” Leon says. “And today’s the first time it’s followed you home?”

Connor starts to nod but then he stops and looks over at Leon. “Well.”

“Well?” Leon echoes.

“It disappeared on my way home,” Connor says. “And then it came back.”

Leon frowns. “It came back when you got home?”

“Yeah,” Connor says. He probably should have noted the time or something but he didn’t. “I was texting my mom. It was about five minutes before you showed up.”

Leon stares at him.

“What?” Connor asks self-consciously. He feels like he’s missing something and he hates that feeling.

“Maybe the curse isn’t a thing, like hockey or whatever,” Leon says slowly. “Maybe the curse is related to a person.”

Connor stares at him. “But you’re the only one here,” he says in confusion.

“I didn’t curse you,” Leon says, unnecessarily.

“I know,” Connor says, sitting up and resting his arms on his thighs as he thinks. “The mistletoe appears when you’re with me.”

Leon looks surprised at that. “Just me?”

Connor remembers Leon arriving at the arena about five minutes after he’d noticed the mistletoe, that first day. “Yeah,” Connor says. “Pretty sure.”

They’re staring at each other and Connor can feel his cheeks heat up, even though he doesn’t fully understand why. What he knows is that he’s cursed, there’s mistletoe which - as much as he tries to deny it - is clearly a sign of something sexual or maybe even romantic, he’s not sure; and it’s got something to do with Leon.

“It’s fine,” he says after a few minutes of silence between them. He’d half-hoped Leon would say something - anything - and just, maybe, fix this somehow. But Leon’s not talking and Connor is really, really embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll uh, figure it out.”

“No,” Leon says, a crease appearing between his eyebrows as he watches Connor. “I want to help.”

“We don’t even know what’s causing it, so how can we fix it?”

Leon sighs. “Connor. It’s mistletoe. You know what’s going to make it go away, but every time Nursey mentioned it, you looked uncomfortable.” Which is pretty rich, Connor thinks, because Leon’s totally blushing right now. “Maybe you don’t have to, you know, have sex.”

Connor fidgets a little, avoiding catching Leon’s gaze. “Well, what then?”

“Maybe,” Leon says, and he stands up to walk over to Connor, sinking onto the sofa next to him. “Maybe, uh, a kiss?”

Connor’s wide-eyed as Leon leans in, his hand dropping to Connor’s thigh, closer to his knee than, well.

He holds his breath.

And Leon kisses his cheek.

Connor feels such a sharp, hot well of frustration that he almost throws something across the room.

A few berries fall down between them but the mistletoe doesn’t disappear.

Connor turns to Leon and grabs his shirt, pulling him in close. “Let’s try that again,” he says and kisses Leon square on the mouth.

“Okay, but you didn’t want-” Leon says against his lips and Connor just kisses him harder, his hands cupping Leon’s cheeks and wriggling as close as he can manage.

Connor’s panting hard when he pulls back. Instead of a single sprig of mistletoe above his head, there’s now a handful and there’s even some sprinkled around the room.

“It doesn’t seem to be working,” Leon says, his fingertips touching his lips. They’re pink and puffy and Connor really, really wants to kiss him some more, fuck the mistletoe. “It’s making it worse.”

“You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to,” Connor says, somewhat moodily.

“Hey,” Leon says immediately, reaching for Connor. “I didn’t say that.”

And somehow Connor finds himself in Leon’s lap, straddling his thighs and being thoroughly kissed. Like, he’s gonna have beard burn in the morning which will be pretty hard to explain.

The mistletoe finally disappears right around the time that Connor’s trying to wriggle out of his shirt and Leon’s stripping his own off. He pauses above Connor, his arms flexed as he holds onto his shirt and Connor makes a wounded kind of noise at the delay.

“It’s gone,” Leon says, staring down at Connor.

“Someone actually cursed me to get laid,” Connor realizes, somewhat belatedly. “Like, that wasn’t just Nursey fucking with me. The mistletoe wanted me to get laid.”

Leon flushes. “So uh, I swear I didn’t curse you,” he insists, but he looks kind of guilty. Connor lets his hands rest on Leon’s thighs and he squeezes them gently, a silent invitation to continue. “So my family kind of has a history of being capable of strong magic. And sometimes when one of us really, really wants something, the magic kind of has a mind of its own.”

Connor blinks up at him. Leon looks worried, practically hugging his shirt to his body and Connor reaches up to gently tug it away. “I didn’t get you a Christmas gift,” he says.

“Uh,” Leon says dumbly. “Okay?”

“Like, I feel like I should have gotten you something,” Connor continues, dropping Leon’s shirt on the floor and sliding his hands up Leon’s body and tugging him down into a kiss. “You know, in return.”

“For a curse?” Leon asks skeptically.

“For this,” Connor says and kisses him again. “You.”

He can feel Leon laughing against him and Connor sighs and pushes him back against the cushions, giving Leon a reproachful look. “I’m trying to be uh, sweet. Romantic. You wanted me so much you accidentally cursed me.”

Leon grins at him. “True,” he allows. “Sorry.”

A rogue berry falls between them, bouncing off Leon’s thigh and rolling onto the floor. Connor stares at it. “We should uh-.”

“Yeah,” Leon says.

“Bed,” Connor says firmly. He’s not having sex with Leon on his sofa. He wants a bed. He wants to take his time. If he’s going to practice tomorrow with no mistletoe but some pretty obvious beard burn, he wants to make sure he leaves his own marks on Leon too.

“Sure,” Leon agrees easily, maybe to all the things Connor hasn’t yet told him, and distracts him with another kiss.


End file.
